I can see where thebin is coming from on this. The LW's boyfriend isn't assaulting her, I wouldn't tie this to domestic violence or rape, as some posters have- losely at least. Not that it isn't aggressive, quasi-abusive or traumatizing, but because it does a disservice to actual violent crime victims when every annoyance between lovers is categorized as a dangerous, criminal assault with the woman as the inevitable helpless victim. Kicking him in the balls has been mentioned several times, and would probably be overkill. At best, he's dense, at worse, he's an abuser with a passive-aggressive streak. The fact that LW has to write an advice comumnist about it does give him a benefit of the doubt regarding how assertively she's communicated with him. However, the mind-control crap sort of loses him that benefit, if you ask me. In any event, dumping him will succeed where reasonable attempts at communicating with him have failed. Perhaps for the future, he can learn to listen and she can learn not to ask other people for validation on her feelings.